Manchester is plastered with the slogan “Ready for change”. But what the voters want to know from the Conservatives this week is: are they ready? And have they changed?

A daily flurry of policy announcements has been scheduled by Tory high command designed to present the Conservatives as a government in waiting rather than an opposition on the attack. Yesterday was welfare reform and a “tax cut for jobs”; today “tough choices” on public spending are pencilled into the new Labour-style grid. The pitch is that the broken society has now been compounded by a broken economy and a broken politics — a triple whammy that only the Tories can fix.

There is to be no complacency. The Harvey Nichols cocktail bar in the conference centre has been instructed not to sell champagne for fear that somebody might be caught celebrating prematurely. There are, however, Future Conservative Prime Minister babygros on sale in the Tory party shop that are just a little bit too smug.

David Cameron told his activists yesterday that he was leading a “changed party” that now wanted to transform Britain. “If the charge is youth, enthusiasm and energy, I plead guilty,” he said.

And yet the messages coming out of this conference are mixed. The Conservatives switch between hugging hoodies and mugging them, they alternate between promising to help the vulnerable and pledging a benefit crackdown on the “workshy”. As they struggle to combine Thatcherite instincts and One Nation rhetoric, they offer a confusing combination of optimism and pessimism. Even the backdrop to the conference platform keeps switching between glorious sunshine and gloomy black.

On Sunday Eric Pickles, the Tory chairman, told The Observer that the Conservatives wanted to be judged on what they did for the poor — while in The Mail on Sunday Chris Grayling was simultaneously revealing his plans to lock up 100,000 yobs. It was a deliberate attempt to give different messages to different audiences. But a Tory party that was until recently by its own admission seen as “nasty” needs to be more consistent if it is going to convince people that now it really is “nice”.

The rows over Europe matter because they reinforce the view that these are the “same old Tories” who are self-indulgently obsessing about their private concerns. Off the record, Shadow Cabinet ministers say there is no way the Conservatives would spend their first months in power faffing about with a referendum on Europe if the Lisbon treaty had already been ratified. Publicly, however, senior figures will say only they know what they would do but they are not going to tell anyone — a bizarre position from a party that claims to want to create a new, more open sort of politics. By failing to face down the Eurosceptics who are demanding a post-ratification referendum, Mr Cameron gives the impression that he is in hock to — rather in charge of — his right-wingers.

And this is a dangerous position for the Tory leader to be in. Support for the Conservatives is shallow: almost half of people who say they intend to vote Tory might change their mind. It is also based almost entirely on Mr Cameron. According to the latest Populus poll, only 28 per cent of voters think that the Conservative Party has really changed, while 68 per cent say that the “Conservative Party doesn’t seem to have changed much under David Cameron and they’re only doing better because Labour has become so unpopular”. Samantha Cameron may buy her clothes at Topshop, but the rest of the party is seen as far more traditional. It is perhaps symbolic that M&S has an outlet in the conference hall but Sir Philip Green turned down the offer of a Topshop stand.

“Dave is the change”, the strategists like to say, but that means an almost impossible weight now rests on the Conservative leader and people’s impressions of his values and strength. If too many voters decide that he is being run by his unreconstructed party, the Tory vote could collapse overnight. As one Shadow Minister, Greg Clark, told the Times fringe meeting, in 1997 the electorate was saying “Yes, please” to Labour and now it is saying only “Yes, but” to the Conservatives.

In fact Mr Cameron does have a genuinely radical programme for government. It is one based on handing power from Whitehall to ordinary people — but in return demanding that citizens take much more responsibility for their lives. The iPod generation would get more choice over schools and hospitals, but they would also be expected to organise their own playlists properly.

On everything from obesity to children’s television, marriage to climate change, the Tory leader wants to challenge public assumptions rather than just changing laws. It’s less nanny state than naughty-step state, in which the Conservatives hope to shame — or encourage — people into being good. There could be quite dramatic cultural changes. The Department of Health would, for example, be abolished in its current form by the Tories. Hospitals and GPs’ surgeries would be run locally, and a new much smaller Department of Public Health set up in Whitehall concentrating on changing lifestyles.

Mr Cameron does have a “big idea” but too often the long-term strategic message is undermined by short-term tactics designed to control one day’s headlines. Yesterday he promised to “square up and look the British people in the eyes” but that is precisely what he is not doing on Europe. He said his priority is to “help the very poorest” but he also wants to spend money on middle-class inheritance tax.

When he speaks to the conference on Thursday he must show that he has the courage of his convictions. Only then will he be able — as he keeps saying — to “seal the deal” with the voters.

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